Invited Paper

Application of Wafer Direct Bonding Technique to Optical Nonreciprocal Devices

Volume 3, Number 3, June 2011
Tetsuya Mizumoto Ryohei Takei

DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2011.2131641 1943-0655/$26.00 2011 IEEE

IEEE Photonics Journal

Wafer Direct Bonding Technique

Application of Wafer Direct Bonding Technique to Optical Nonreciprocal Devices

Tetsuya Mizumoto and Ryohei Takei (Invited Paper)
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2011.2131641 1943-0655/$26.00 2011 IEEE

Manuscript received February 27, 2011; revised March 12, 2011; accepted March 13, 2011. Date of current version June 28, 2011. This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a Grant for Practical Application of University R&D Results under the Matching Fund Method funded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization. Corresponding author: T. Mizumoto (e-mail: tmizumot@pe.titech.ac.jp).

Abstract: A wafer direct bonding technique enables one to integrate dissimilar crystals like a magnetooptic garnet on Si and IIIV semiconductors, which facilitates fabrication of optical nonreciprocal devices on commonly used waveguide platforms. The surface-activated direct bonding technique is described, focusing on the change of surface roughness due to the surface activation process with oxygen or argon plasma irradiation. The interferometric waveguide optical isolator that uses magnetooptic nonreciprocal phase shift is fabricated by directly bonding a magnetooptic garnet onto a silicon rib waveguide. An isolation of 21 dB is obtained at a wavelength of 1.56 m. The interferometric optical isolator can be modified to a waveguide optical circulator. The calculated performance of the waveguide optical circulator is also shown in this paper. Index Terms: Photonic integrated circuit, magnetooptic garnet, direct bonding, optical isolator, optical circulator.

1. Introduction
Optical isolators play an essential role in preventing unwanted optical feedback in photonic circuits. They are used to protect optical active devices form unwanted reflections. The isolator that is commercially available at present is composed of microoptic components. The essential function of nonreciprocity is provided by a Faraday rotator. The alignment of constituent components is a laborintensive work. Also, the present isolator is not compatible with photonic integrated circuits. It is needed to develop a waveguide optical isolator to realize the integration. Waveguide isolators have been investigated for the application to photonic integrated circuits. The first version of the waveguide isolator uses the nonreciprocal trasverse electrictransverse magnetic (TETM) mode conversion in a magnetooptic garnet waveguide, which is a direct translation of a bulk Faraday isolator [1]. This type of isolator requires the phase matching between orthogonally polarized TE and TM modes. Hence, the severe control of waveguide parameters is needed to realize a birefringence-free waveguide. The isolator that is based on the field displacement, instead of mode conversion, has the advantage of single polarization mode operation because there is no need for TETM mode phase matching. When ferromagnetic materials having a sufficiently large magnetooptic effect are used, remarkable absorption difference is provided between forward and backward propagating

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lightwave. By using this effect, an optical isolator based on nonreciprocal loss was proposed [2], [3] and demonstrated to exhibit nonreciprocal functions [4], [5]. We measured the phase shift that was dependent on the propagation direction in magnetooptic garnet waveguides [6], [7]. This effect is called nonreciprocal phase shift. An optical isolator is constructed by combining the nonreciprocal phase shift with an interferometric waveguide structure [8]. Since this isolator operates in a single polarization, it is not needed to take the phase matching between two orthogonally polarized modes. This, in turn, results in the advantages of relaxed fabrication tolerance, as well as a wide operating wavelength range. In addition to the operating principles of optical isolators, there exist issues associated with materials for realizing an optical isolator in a photonic integrated circuit. That is, a magnetooptic material having a sufficiently large magnetooptic effect with low optical absorption is to be integrated on commonly used optical waveguide platforms like IIIV compound semiconductors and silicon. In an optical fiber communication wavelength range, a magnetooptic garnet is the best candidate, since it has a large first-order magnetooptic effect and low absorption. It, however, has been a difficult task to make the epitaxial growth of a magnetooptic garnet on semiconductors and vice versa. Our approach to integrate the magnetooptic garnet with semiconductors is to use a direct bonding technique. In this paper, the surface-activated direct bonding of a magnetooptic garnet on semiconductors is described. Then, the waveguide optical isolator that uses the magnetooptic nonreciprocal phase shift is fabricated in a Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) waveguide with the direct bonding technique. Also, the calculated performance of a waveguide optical circulator is described that uses the nonreciprocal phase shift in an SOI waveguide bonded with the magnetooptic garnet.

2. Surface-Activated Direct Bonding

The epitaxial growth of a magnetooptic garnet on other substrates than garnets is quite a challenging work. If one considers the growth of the garnet on IIIV compound semiconductors and silicon, there exists large mismatch in physical properties between the garnet and the semiconductors. Because of this, a magnetooptic garnet with good crystallinity, sufficiently large magnetooptic effect, and practically low optical absorption has yet to be grown on the semiconductors [9][11]. To overcome this, we developed the surface-activated direct bonding technique for integrating a magnetooptic garnet on IIIV compound semiconductors and silicon [12], [13]. The process of surface-activated direct bonding is schematically shown in Fig. 1. After the surface activation process, such as plasma irradiation and ion beam irradiation, is performed on bonding wafers, the wafers are mated with each other. The contacted sample is pressed at an elevated temperature in a vacuum chamber successively [14]. It is worth noting that low temperature process is important to circumvent the problems associated with the difference in thermal expansion between dissimilar crystals. As a surface activation process, we found it was effective to expose wafers to the plasma generated in an oxygen atmosphere for wafer combinations of a magnetooptic garnet YCe3 Fe5 O12 (Ce:YIG) on IIIV compound semiconductor and Ce:YIG on SOI. The surface smoothness is an important factor to realize successful bonding. We examined the effect of pretreatment and surface activation process on the roughness of wafer surfaces [15]. A 0.5-m-thick Ce:YIG layer was grown on a (111)-oriented GdCa3 GaMgZr5 O12 (SGGG) substrate by sputter epitaxy growth. We used a (100)-oriented InP substrate as a representative of IIIV compound semiconductor and a (100)-oriented SOI wafer that is commercially available at SOITEC in the experiment. The thickness of silicon layer was 220 nm in an SOI wafer. The details of precleaning processes are described in [15]. After the precleaning process, a wafer was loaded into a vacuum chamber and was exposed to the oxygen or argon plasma generated with a radio-frequency (RF) power of 400 W under a gas flow and a pressure of 100 sccm and 120 Pa, respectively. The operating frequency was 13.56 MHz. The wafer surfaces were observed by atomic force microscope (AFM). The surface roughness, which is defined by the average of rms values obtained by the AFM measurement, is shown in Fig. 2 as a

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Fig. 1. Schematic of surface-activated direct bonding.

function of the plasma exposure time. Here, the measurement was performed for three areas on every wafer. In every wafer, the surface roughness is reduced by the oxygen plasma irradiation at an exposure time of 1030 s compared with the initial precleaned state. On the other hand, the surface roughness is increased by the argon plasma irradiation for the Ce:YIG and InP wafers. It can be concluded that the oxygen plasma irradiation for 10 or 30 s is the best method for reducing the roughness of wafer surfaces. We carried out the bonding experiment for wafer combination of Ce:YIG and SOI. In this paper, 20 20 mm2 Ce:YIG and SOI wafers were used. After the surface activation process of the oxygen plasma irradiation of 30 s and 10 s for Ce:YIG and SOI, respectively, the wafers were brought into contact. Then, the contacted wafers were pressed with a pressure of 5 MPa for 8 h. While applying the pressure, the sample was annealed at a temperature of 200  C and 250  C for Ce:YIG and SOI, respectively. The bonding was successfully achieved. The bonding strength measured by a tensile test was less than 0.02 MPa for the sample activated with the oxygen plasma with an RF power of 400 W. The bonding strength was increased greater than 1.8 MPa, when an RF power of 500 W was applied to generate the oxygen plasma irradiation for Ce:YIG and SOI wafers. There was no remarkable degradation in the surface roughness of wafers after the plasma irradiation generated with an RF power of 500 W [15]. In another series of experiment, a Ce:YIG wafer was bonded on a GaInAsP g 1:25 m wafer grown on a (100) InP substrate. The thickness of GaInAsP layer was 0:45 m: 9 10 mm2 wafers were used in this study. After the surface activation process of oxygen plasma irradiation, two wafers were brought into contact and were pressed with a pressure of 1.0 MPa at a temperature of 250  C for 1 h. The bonding strength was measured to be higher than 0.5 MPa. When a tensile 9 0.5 MPa was applied, fracture was observed in the InP substrate without debonding between Ce:YIG and GaInAsP [12].

3. Interferometric Waveguide Optical Isolator

The interferometric isolator has the advantage of no need for phase matching between two orthogonally polarized modes. The MachZehnder interferometer consists of two multimode interference (MMI) couplers, magnetooptic nonreciprocal phase shifters in two arms, and a reciprocal phase shifter (phase bias) in one of the arms as shown in Fig. 3. An external magnetic field is applied in an antiparallel direction in two arms of interferometer, which provides the nonreciprocal phase shift in a

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Fig. 2. Measured surface roughness of (a) Ce:YIG, (b) InP, and (c) SOI after the oxygen or argon plasma irradiation [15].

Fig. 3. Schematic of interferometric waveguide optical isolator.

pushpull manner. Combining the nonreciprocal phase difference of = 90 and the phase bias of 90 , the interferometer exhibits constructive and destructive interference for the forward and the backward propagating lightwave, respectively. That is, 90 phase difference between two arms, which is induced by a magnetooptic effect, is canceled by 90 phase bias in the forward propagation. This results in the constructive interference. In the backward direction, two phase differences, i.e., 90 magnetooptic one and 90 phase bias, sum up to 180 , which results in the destructive interference. The operating bandwidth of interferometric isolator is mainly determined by two factors, i.e., the wavelength dependences of nonreciprocal phase shift and reciprocal phase bias. The former is governed by the wavelength dependence of the magnetooptic effect, whereas the latter is governed by the waveguide geometry, together with the wavelength dependence of refractive indices of constituent materials. The operating bandwidth can be extended by tuning the dispersion

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Fig. 4. SOI waveguide optical isolator [23].

Fig. 5. Calculated nonreciprocal phase shift in SOI and IIIV waveguides.

characteristics of interferometer waveguides [16]. By tailoring the width and/or length of interferometer waveguide arms, one can control the wavelength dependence of reciprocal phase bias. It is possible to design so that the wavelength dependence of magnetooptic effect, which is decreased in a longer wavelength region, is cancelled by that of the reciprocal phase bias in the backward propagation. The effectiveness of this idea has been demonstrated in an interferometric isolator composed of a Ce:YIG guiding layer [17]. The isolator operation was successfully demonstrated first in a waveguide composed of a magnetooptic garnet guiding layer by Okamura et al. [18], and by Fujita et al. [19]. The interferometric isolator was also fabricated in a GaInAsP waveguide. A Ce:YIG was directly bonded on a GaInAsP waveguide by using a hydrophilic bonding technique [20]. An isolation of 4.9 dB was obtained at a wavelength of 1.55 m. In this demonstration, an isolation was mainly limited by the bonding nonuniformity, which resulted in an insufficient bonding area along the light propagation direction. The same ideas, i.e., the direct bonding of garnet and the interferometric waveguide concept, were applied to an SOI waveguide. A Ce:YIG layer was directly bonded as a top cladding layer onto the 300-nm- thick silicon guiding layer of SOI wafer, as shown in Fig. 4. A large magnetooptic phase shift is obtainable in a Ce:YIG/SOI waveguide compared with a Ce:YIG/IIIV waveguide. This is because a silica-under-cladding layer has a lower refractive index than a Ce:YIG over cladding layer in a Ce:YIG/SOI waveguide [21], [22]. This results in a large penetration of optical field in the Ce:YIG layer, which, in turn, provides a large magnetooptic effect. The calculated nonreciprocal phase shift is shown in Fig. 5 as a function of the thickness of guiding layer at a wavelength of 1.55 m. In both waveguides, the top cladding layer Ce:YIG is assumed to have a Faraday rotation coefficient of 4500 deg/cm. The IIIV waveguide is composed of a GaInAsP guiding layer grown on an InP substrate. The GaInAsP guiding layer is assumed to have the same refractive index 3.45 as silicon. It can be observed that the SOI based waveguide provides larger nonreciprocal phase shift

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Fig. 6. Experimental setup used for the measurement of isolator performance.

Fig. 7. Measured fiber-to-fiber transmittance of SOI waveguide optical isolator [23].

compared with a IIIV-based waveguide. Because of this, the propagation distance required to obtain a magnetooptic phase difference of = 90 is greatly reduced to $ 300 m when one uses the Ce:YIG as a magnetooptic cladding layer. Also, the high index contrast between silicon and cladding layers provides the strong confinement of lightwave in a silicon wire waveguide. This enables one to make use of bending sections with small radius of curvature. Hence, the overall device length of interferometric waveguide isolator can be reduced G 400 m when one uses a silicon wire waveguide interferometer. We fabricated an SOI waveguide optical isolator, where a 10-nm-high and 2-m-wide rib waveguide structure was used instead of a silicon wire waveguide [23]. The Ce:YIG cladding layer was successfully bonded on the silicon waveguide by using a direct bonding technique with the oxygen plasma surface activation process. The fabricated SOI waveguide isolator was characterized in the experimental setup shown in Fig. 6. A pair of compact permanent magnets was used to apply a magnetic field in an antiparallel direction in two arms of interferometer. A broadband light source was used to launch a fundamental TM mode into a device through a polarization maintaining fiber (PMF). The lightwave transmitted through a device was probed by another PMF and was detected by an optical spectrum analyzer. A 2 2 optical switch was used to reverse the propagation direction. The fiber-to-fiber transmittance was measured for counter propagation directions with a fixed magnetic field, as shown in Fig. 7. An isolation of 21 dB was measured at a wavelength of 1.56 m with an insertion loss of 8 dB, excluding fiber-to-waveguide coupling losses [23]. The insertion loss is mainly attributable to a silicon waveguide loss, which can be reduced by improving a waveguide fabrication technique.

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Fig. 8. Schematic of interferometric waveguide optical circulator operation [25].

Fig. 9. Simulated performance of waveguide optical circulator for input from (a) port-1 and (b) port-4 [25]. Tij indicates the transmittance from j-th port to i-th port.

4. Waveguide optical circulator

An interferometric waveguide isolator can be modified to build a waveguide optical circulator by replacing MMI couplers with proper input and output couplers like 2 2 directional couplers [24]. The input lightwave is transmitted to a cross port in the direction of in-phase interference, whereas it is transmitted to a bar port in the opposite direction as shown in Fig. 8. Four-port and three-port optical waveguide circulators are realizable by properly designing input and output couplers. The directional couplers are designed so that the circulator provides a sufficient extinction ratio in a silicon wire waveguide. The details of design are described in [25]. According to numerical simulations, the crosstalk G 20 dB is obtainable in a wavelength range of 1.52 m and 1.58 m with an insertion loss G 0.05 dB, as shown in Fig. 9. Here, the material loss

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and the junction loss caused by the scattering and reflection at the interface between silica- and garnet-cladding regions are not included. If we choose the thickness of the guiding layer to be 300 nm, the junction loss is reduced to G 0.5 dB at the sacrifice of reduced magnetooptic phase shift. The total device length is approximately 650 m when we use a 300-nm-thick and 500-nmwide silicon wire and a Ce:YIG top cladding layer.

5. Conclusion
The surface-activated direct bonding technique is versatile for integrating dissimilar crystals in photonic integrated circuits. A magnetooptic garnet has been successfully bonded on semiconductor waveguides composed of IIIV as well as SOI. As a surface activation process, the oxygen plasma irradiation is effective for wafer combinations of garnet/IIIV and garnet/SOI. The interferometric waveguide optical isolator that uses a magnetooptic nonreciprocal phase shift is attractive because there is no need for TETM mode phase matching. An SOI waveguide interferometric isolator was fabricated by the surface-activated direct bonding of Ce:YIG on SOI. Its performance was successfully demonstrated with an isolation of 21 dB. The structure of interferometric waveguide isolator can be modified to a waveguide optical circulator by introducing a proper design of input and output couplers. Numerical simulations show that the crosstalk G 20 dB is obtainable in an SOI based waveguide circulator in a wavelength range between 1.52 and 1.58 m.

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